Earlier this evening, Glenn Reynolds proposed that a baseball stadium be placed on the site of the World Trade Center. Although he initially called it a stupid idea, I think he's onto something -- and David Pinto agrees as well. Although I don't think they're thinking of the right sport. It's football that ought to be played on the site.
There are a number of obstacles to a baseball stadium. First of all, which team gets to play there? Splitting a home field means splitting revenues (parking, concessions, luxury boxes) -- something that neither Yankees owner George Steinbrenner nor Mets owner Fred Wilpon will be willing to do. You can count on that.
Then there's the possibility that one team gets to play on the site, while the other has to make do with a second class facility. That's a solution that's bound to backfire, and one that might force the city to overspend on a second stadium in order to keep both teams happy. And with the city in the midst of a massive budget crisis, one that has already led Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reneg on stadium promises made by the Giuliani Administration to both the Mets and Yankees, that's an unlikely scenario as well.
Then there's the transportation question. Sure, it's one thing for 20,000 people to make their way to Madison Square Garden 80+ nights a year to see the Knicks and the Rangers at Madison Square Garden -- something that isn't so tough, as their fan bases consist of larger percentages of corporate clients who can get to the Garden directly by means of mass transit. But it's another thing entirely when crowds of 45,000-55,000 people have to make their way to Manhattan from all over the New York Metro area for a baseball game 81 times a year. Inevitably, some of those people are going to want to get to the game by car, something that putting a stadium in Manhattan makes all the tougher.
There are other transportation considerations -- like the fact that the majority of the Mets fan base comes from Long Island, and that the current site of Shea Stadium, situated as it is along several main highways, is already in the ideal spot to serve them. Moving the stadium just ten miles West into Manhattan forces more of those folks onto mass transit. And while that might be the ideal solution for fans in the outerboroughs of New York City and Northern New Jersey, it would present one heck of a barrier to fans on Long Island.
But football is a different story. There's only one team that could be placed there, and that's the New York Jets (the Giants being locked into a long term lease as the primary tenant of Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands). Owner Woody Johnson has wanted to move the team back to New York City ever since he bought the Jets from the Hess family. Even better, as well heeled as Johnson is, he'll be able to contribute far more to the construction of a football stadium than either Steinbrenner or Wilpon could to a ball park.
Then there's one last consideration: a football stadium in Manhattan, as Mike Lupica foresaw in his comic novel, Bump and Run, would be a lisence to print money. Selling luxury boxes to corporations in Manhattan might just be the easiest sell in professional sports. In one fell swoop, the Jets may very well be transformed into the most valuable team in the NFL, if not one of the most valuable properties in professional sports.
And just because the Jets would be the primary tenant, doesn't mean that the facility wouldn't be able to host other events. In actuality, a number of designs that have been proposed for stadiums in the New York area have included features that would allow them to be instantly reconfigured to host the NCAA Basketball Final Four or even the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus.
This isn't just an idea that could work, it's one that should have sports fans everywhere excited at the prospect.
UPDATE: Charles Kuffner, who is obviously a Jets fan like me, likes the WTC football idea too:
I like this idea. The Jets have never really had a home of their own - they used to play in Shea Stadium, now it's Giants Stadium. It's time they stepped out of the shadows and formed their own identity in their own stadium.
Here, here. It's time to get this ball rolling.
